(J 30 



Z 

 UJ 



20 - 





 60 



.! '2 • • 



» a • 



PECTORAL FIN 



I .J - i I I I 1 L. 



PELVIC FIN 



-~50 



E 



3 40 



H 

 130 



a 



UJ 20 



X 



t. 



DORSAL FIN 

 _l I I L_ 



150 200 250 300 



FORK LENGTH (cm) 



Figure 4. — Comparison of regressions of morphometric 

 characters on fork length of sailfish from the Atlantic 

 (dashed line) and the eastern North Pacific (solid line). 

 Numbers indicate sample sizes for points. 



Buena Vista (Table 1). At both sampling locations 

 the sizes of sailfish were quite similar, although the 

 females averaged 179 cm long and the males 168 cm 

 long (Fig. 2). Between locations the size differences 

 are statistically significant only for females. 



Location and Sex Differences 



Analysis of covariance was used to test whether 

 for each sex the regressions (Table 8) were signifi- 

 cantly different between locations (Table 6). Be- 

 cause there was no trend in the results, we assumed 

 that there were no location differences and pooled 

 the data from the two locations. We then used 

 analysis of covariance to test whether there were 

 differences between sexes. Only weight-length and 

 dorsal fin height-length relations proved to be sig- 

 nificantly different between sexes. Females were 

 heavier for a given length than males, and females 



under about 160 cm long had a taller dorsal fin than 

 males (Fig. 3). For fish larger than 160 cm long, the 

 males had a taller dorsal fin. However, there is con- 

 siderable overlap in the data for males and females, 

 and probably the difference between sexes would 

 disappear if a larger sample of fish were analyzed. 

 Regressions based on the pooled data are shown in 

 Table 7. 



Comparison with Atlantic Sailfish 



Morrow and Harbo (1969) analyzed meristic and 

 morphometric measurements of sailfish from sev- 

 eral locations in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 

 They found that the characters were similar for fish 

 from both oceans and they therefore concluded that 

 specimens from the two oceans belong to the same 

 species. We used Morrow and Harbo's data from 

 the Atlantic for comparison with our data, which 

 provides a larger sample from the eastern Pacific 



STRIPED MARLIN 



~\ i i i i i i i i i i i i l i i r 



~\ i i I r 



Mazatlan 



— M 229 164.7 

 F 226 167.2 





Buena Vista / 



\ NX 



100 



1 



\— M 622 171.3 



o 





\--F 486 172.4 



Z 80 



/ 





3 







o 







UJ 60 



— M 





IT 







_l I I I—*" 



-I I I I I I I l_ 



San Diego 



n x 



\— M 147 164.9 

 '•— F 315 170.2 



"T-J I L_ 



100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 ISO 190 200 210 

 105 115 125 135 145 155 165 175 1B5 195 205 215 



EYE-FORK LENGTH (cm) 



Figure 5. — Length frequency of striped marlin sampled in 

 this study. 



115 



